Authors: Dena Nicotra
“Shhh!” I warned. “There’s someone back there. Give me your lighter.”
Mic tossed it to me and I motioned for him to duck down. I worked my way back to the aisle where I’d heard the sounds and began to move forward slowly with the lighter in one hand and my knife in the other. At the back of the store, I saw a door and I stopped short to listen for any sounds. The faint, but distinct noise came again. I glanced back to see Mic’s shadow in the front of the store. He was standing up despite my instructions. I motioned again for him to get down but he didn’t pay me any attention. Frustrated, I turned away and stuck the lighter in my mouth, biting it between my front teeth. I gripped my knife and took a deep breath. My eyes had adjusted to the dim light, so I tried to turn the doorknob as quietly as I could. To my surprise, it wasn’t locked and opened easily. I reached for the lighter and lit it, waving it to the left and right to get a better look around. The stench of body odor slammed me in the face like a brick wall, and I had to swallow hard to keep from gagging. The small storage room was packed with boxes from floor to ceiling and there, sitting on the floor, was a young female. I noticed her pupils and quickly assessed that she was human. Her long blonde hair was a mass of tangles. Her eyes were wild in the dim light, and I could see that her mouth was covered with a long strip of gray duct tape. She was wearing a soiled sundress and her knees were drawn up, revealing dark splotchy patches of bruises from her thighs to her shins. I could see that her ankles were bound with rope and her hands were tied to a support beam behind her. Beads of perspiration collected on her forehead. She’d clearly been in this position for a very long time. I moved in cautiously, but stopped short when I noticed her eyes darting frantically from me to the left of the room. I followed her eyes, but didn’t see anything besides boxes and shadows.
Still, her eyes conveyed a warning that I wasn’t about to disregard. I lifted my knife hip level, took a defensive stance, and steadied my balance by extending my left arm. “I know you’re in here,” I announced. “I can smell you.” At that moment, a stack of boxes tumbled toward me, and I realized that whoever it was behind there had shoved them over in an attempt to distract me. I dodged to the right and managed to hold on to my knife, but my shoulder took the impact and I lost my balance and fell to the floor. Still flat on my stomach, I raised my head up just in time to grab the ankle of the perpetrator as he tried to run past me. The toe of a work boot caught me square in the jaw, and I lost my hold. Hot pain seared through my side as he kicked me again. Everything in me fought to reach my knife, which lay on the floor in front of me just out of my reach. My opponent lost no time stomping on my groping hand. The poor girl tied to the pole was screaming against the duct tape, her muffled cries doing little to help either of us.
“Stay down Lee!” shouted Mic from behind me. I heard the distinct sound of a hammer being pulled, and then the shot fired. My ears began to ring instantly, and I pulled my injured hand to my chest. Mic dropped to his knees at my side. “Are you all right, Lee? Don’t try to move, just lay still.” I coughed and spat blood on the cement floor. The pain that followed announced at least a broken rib or two. “Son of a bitch!” I moaned. Mic stroked my hair like one would a child who’d had a bad dream.
“It’s okay, you’re okay,” he soothed.
“Help her,” I demanded. Mic turned his attention to the young woman and peeled the tape from her mouth. She was uttering a string of incoherent words that, mixed with my ringing ears, did little for my nerves. I rolled on my side and took short little breaths to calm the adrenaline rush that pumped through my body. A bright light pierced the small space, and I could hear Giz behind me. He was shining a flashlight right in my face, and talking way too fast. I could make out about every third word. “She…hurt…doctor…now.”
“No doctor, Giz,” I managed. Clearly, rooster boy was freaking out, and I needed to sit up so that he could tell I was okay. Mic had used my knife to free the girl and then the two men helped to get us both back to the van where it was safer. I couldn’t tell from the girl’s ramblings if the guy who had tied her up was alone or not, and since I was in no condition to fight, the safety of the van sounded like a good plan. Mic lifted the girl in his arms like an infant and carried her. Giz offered his support by placing his arm out for me to lean on. I didn’t want to add any pressure to my ribs and, frankly, there was no way in hell Giz could pick me up. I probably outweighed him by twenty pounds.
Barbara slid the side door open when she saw us coming, and Jacob offered his hand to me like a true little gentleman. “That’s okay buddy, I’d better pull myself in,” I said. He shrugged his shoulders and moved back so that I could make my way in. Mic and Giz assisted the girl, and she immediately scooted to the back of the van without saying a word to anyone. She was clearly in a state of shock, and I couldn’t blame her.
“Oh my God! What the hell happened in there?” Barbara asked, wringing her hands nervously. “We heard the gunshot and thought for sure someone had been killed.
“Someone was killed,” I managed.
“Who?”
“I don’t know, some nasty older guy that had this one here tied up in the back in the supply room.”
“A man, not a simp?”
“Yeah, he was human,” I said shaking my head.
“And you shot him?”
“No, I did. I found a .38 on a shelf under the counter, and just as I was checking it out, I heard the commotion in the back of the store. I ran back there and saw him kicking her, and I just reacted,” said Mic.
“It’s a good thing it was loaded. I think he would have killed me,” I said with a grimace. The pain in my ribs was excruciating.
“His name was Ed,” muttered the girl with the matted blonde hair.
“Excuse me?” Barbara said.
“He owned this place, and I trusted him. Oh Jesus, I can’t believe I trusted him!” she said with a sorrowful moan.
“What’s your name, honey?” Barbara asked softly.
“My name’s Alice,” she said between sobs.
“Alice, are you alone?”
“I wasn’t, but I am now.” Her sobs shifted to choked cries.
“I’m so sorry. Can you tell us what happened?” Barbara’s voice was sweet, like a parent who was attempting to sooth a child who had a bad dream.
“I…I was with my boyfriend Max, and we were running together. My grandparents have a place not far from here. I used to come here with them when I was little. Max and I thought that we might be safer here, so we made our way up here on his motorcycle. We stopped at this place because we were hungry, and Ed was really nice, you know?” She wiped her nose with the back of her arm. “He said we could stay with him for the night at his house in the back.” Her voice was getting higher and more desperate as she continued. “We ate some soup with him and then we went to bed. We were sound asleep when I heard the door squeak. That’s what woke me up. I saw him…just standing there at the foot of the bed. I asked him what he wanted and the next thing I knew…” she buried her face in her hands. “Ed hit Max in the back of the head with a hammer, and I’ve been stuck here with him ever since.”
“How long ago was that, Alice?” Barbara asked.
“I don’t know, it was April when we got here, I remember that.”
“It’s August now,” Jacob whispered from behind Barbara. This set off a fresh wave of sobs. “I miss Max so much. I don’t even know if Ed buried him. There was so much blood. So much…and I tried to tell him that we weren’t simps, but he wouldn’t believe me.”
“Whoa, hold on,” I said, raising my good hand to stop her. “You mean that psycho thought you guys were simps?”
“Uh-huh. He kept saying that he was going to make me pay for ruining his life.”
“Sounds like he lost his sanity somewhere in all of this mess,” Barbara said.
“Okay guys, I don’t mean to sound cold, but we need to get focused. It’s getting late and we need to decide if we’re going to stay here, or if we’re going to try to make it to my Aunt Maude’s place.
“Alice, do you happen to know if there’s access to the Internet here?”
“Are you fucking serious, Giz?” I said, not hiding my disgust with his one-track thinking and insensitivity.
“I—I don’t know,” Alice said.
“Well, if not, I vote for pushing on,” Giz said flatly.
Mic sighed and raked his hands through his hair. “Giz, I admire your work ethic, but you need to be a little more mindful of circumstances around you, man.”
“I’m not trying to be insensitive guys, I’m just focused. I mean, all of this ends once we get things in place, you know? I’ve lost my wife. It’s not like I don’t understand pain, and the only thing that keeps me going is trying to make this shit stop as soon as possible.” His voice squeaked. “I don’t know what comes after that, but at least we can live like human beings again.”
Mic patted him on the shoulder and turned to Alice. The side door to the van was still open, and a breeze was picking up. I absently noticed the way his hair stayed perfect. “Alice, would you be comfortable staying here, or do you want to get going?”
“I don’t want to go in that house. Max died in there. I don’t even know if his body is still in that back bedroom.”
“Okay that settles it. Barbara, Giz, let’s go see what we can round up for supplies from the house and then we’ll get out of here.”
Barbara nodded and Mic handed me the gun. “If anyone comes, shoot and ask questions later.”
“You don’t have to tell me that, Mic.”
“I’m coming with you,” Jacob said to no one in particular. I didn’t see the sense in arguing. He’d be just as safe with them as he was with Alice and me, and frankly, I preferred to have one less life to look after. Mic slid the van door closed and I repositioned myself against the wheel well. My hand was throbbing unmercifully and my jaw was killing me. I ran my tongue over my puffy lip and realized it was swelling by the second.
“So, are you guys family?” she asked.
“No, we’re just a group of people that have come together along the way.”
“You’re Lee, right?”
“Yeah, Hailey actually, but I go by Lee.” It occurred to me that we hadn’t paused for introductions. It’s strange how that happens when life is so unnatural. Social graces are just overlooked when life is so ridiculously short and cheap. I’d experienced that early on and came to accept it as a harsh reality. People change under pressure. After leaving my home, it took me a while to learn how to take care of myself. I wandered around like a misplaced kid. I guess I was focused more on my grief than anything, and that made me vulnerable. A part of me just couldn’t grasp the reality I was facing. I ended up getting very sick, and it was the middle of winter. Thankfully, California winters aren’t as brutal as other places, but it was getting down into the teens at night and I was out of provisions. I didn’t even have a decent jacket, and this one night I was just at the end of my rope. I clearly remember wishing for death. It’s not a thought that I’m proud of, but it was how I felt.
I’d wandered all day and ended up in an industrial area by dusk that was full of Quonset hut buildings. The wind was howling, and so was my empty stomach. I hadn’t eaten in two days. At that point I was just exhausted and looking for a place where I could get out of the cold and sleep. I’d tried several doors before finally coming to one that wasn’t locked. Inside, I found a middle-aged couple that had been living there with their reeking dog. According to them, they’d been there without any problems for a few months. They weren’t thrilled about me finding their little shelter, but they didn’t turn me away. Dan and his common-law wife Sarah had a little fire going in an old oil drum. The space was used as some sort of warehouse, back before the war, and it was too big to heat. But, if you were close enough to the fire, it kept the chill away.
As far as I was concerned, they had everything a person could want. They also had food, but they didn’t offer it. They had blankets, but they wouldn’t share those either. I huddled in a corner, on the cold cement floor, with absolutely nothing. I was too sick to move, and dangerously dehydrated from all the vomiting. I begged them to share a little water, but Sarah said they didn’t have any extra. I pleaded for a little food and a blanket and even promised that as soon as I was well enough, I’d return the favor by finding them some provisions.
That didn’t happen. The two of them acted as if I was a life-size nuisance. The second night I was there I began to cough, and that put an abrupt end to their narrow hospitality. They threw me out in the middle of the night, in the rain, and they justified their actions by informing me that I was just
too great a risk
. My coughing was going to get them killed. Their dog could bark, but I was a problem. When I argued this point they said Bono (a raggedy Shepard mix) was different because they could eat him if things got too bad. That’s when I realized that the meat they were cooking up on their little fire wasn’t beef. Shivering, I collected rainwater with my hands from a drainage ditch, and vowed to keep my humanity, no matter what happened. I can’t say that I kept it all, but I still have some.
“The guy that shot Ed is named Mic. He’s actually famous, but I’ll tell you about that later. The lady with the short grey hair is Barbara, the kid’s name is Jacob, but we call him Jake, and that ass with the red rooster hair is Leonard but we call him Gizzard, or Giz. Welcome to the family, Alice.”